When the Iberians arrived in America they found either tribes or peoples of semi-civilised inhabitants. These natives differed from the Spanish and Portuguese invaders to such a degree that their conquest was a true creation of new societies on the ruins of ancient barbarian states. Before analysing the various aspects of American history we must therefore know something of the genius of the conquering race. Conquerors and vanquished intermingled; territorial possession modified the spirit of the conquerors; and the colonies began to dream of conquering their independence. After twenty years of warfare the republic became the political type of these societies, which were exhausted by Spanish tyranny. Two periods, one of military anarchy, the other of domestic order, wealth, and industrialism, succeeded in the new States. {28} [Illustration: HIDALGO. A priest who prepared for the independence of Mexico from the Spanish power. To face p. 29.] {29} LATIN AMERICA CHAPTER I THE CONQUERING RACE Its psychological characteristics--Individualism and its aspects--The sentiment of equality.--African fanaticism. Travellers and psychologists find in modern Greece the craft of Ulysses, the rhetorical ability of the Athenian sophists, and the anarchy of the brilliant democracies once grouped about the blue Mediterranean. Though its purity has been tainted by the onset of Africa and the Turks, the old Hellenic spirit survives in the race. A similar vitality is to be observed in America. The transatlantic Creole is a Spaniard of the heroic period, enervated by miscegenation and climate. It is impossible to understand or explain his character unless we take into account the genius of Spain. The wars of independence gave the Latin New World political liberty, and a deceptive novelty of forms and institutions, but beneath these the spirit of race survives: the Republic reproduces the essential traits of the colonial empire. In the cities, despite the invasion of cosmopolitanism, the old life persists, silent and monotonous, flowing past the ancient landmarks. The same little anxieties trouble mankind, which no longer has the haughty moral rigidity of the old hidalgos. Belief, conversation, intolerance--all retain the {30} imprint of the narrow mould imposed upon them by three centuries of the proudly exclusive spirit of Spain. To study the political and religious history of the last century in the American democracies is to add a chapter to the history of Iberian evolution. Beyond the ocean and the fabled columns which were overthrown by the pikes of the conquistadors is another Spain, tropical, and divided against itself, in which the grace of Andalusia has vanquished the austerity of Castile.[1]